Things Worth Remembering: The Freedom to Be Different After Nazism destroyed his homeland, Simon Rawidowicz defiantly wrote: ‘Do not try to hide the Different inside you.’
Quiet acts of difference shape our lives, though none of them feel that significant, most of the time. (Spencer Grant via Getty Images)
Welcome to “Things Worth Remembering,” in which writers share a poem or a paragraph that all of us should commit to heart. Today, Mijal Bitton, a spiritual leader based in New York City, reflects on the right to be different, a freedom that Jews have died for—and which makes it possible for Jews to continue to live.
Being Jewish has often meant doing things others—including other Jews—may find strange: building a sukkah in a city courtyard, avoiding electricity on Shabbat, or declining the birthday cake because it’s not kosher. These quiet acts of difference shape our lives, though none of them feel that significant, most of the time. One man who understood their significance, though, was Simon Rawidowicz. A Polish-born, German-educated Jewish philosopher, he did not fit into any neat boxes. He studied ancient religious traditions, and was obsessed with enabling Hebrew to be reborn as a living language. He formed his ideas in the academy, then shared them unpretentiously with the public. An advocate of Jewish nationalism, he loved the land of Israel, while daring to critique the Jewish state’s treatment of Arabs. He was heterodox in every way, so he understood the importance of being different. Even when it is fatally risky to be so...
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